Children of the Ghetto eBook

Barracks and convents stood on Zion’s hill.
His brethren, rulers by divine right of the soil they
trod, were lost in the chaos of populations—­Syrians,
Armenians, Turks, Copts, Abyssinians, Europeans—­as
their synagogues were lost amid the domes and minarets
of the Gentiles. The city was full of venerated
relics of the Christ his people had lived—­and
died—­to deny, and over all flew the crescent
flag of the Mussulman.

And so every Friday, heedless of scoffing on-lookers,
Mendel Hyams kissed the stones of the Wailing Place,
bedewing their barrenness with tears; and every year
at Passover, until he was gathered to his fathers,
he continued to pray: “Next year—­in
Jerusalem!”

CHAPTER XVIII.

THE HEBREW’S FRIDAY NIGHT.

“Ah, the Men-of-the-Earth!” said Pinchas
to Reb Shemuel, “ignorant fanatics, how shall
a movement prosper in their hands? They have not
the poetic vision, their ideas are as the mole’s;
they wish to make Messiahs out of half-pence.
What inspiration for the soul is there in the sight
of snuffy collectors that have the air of Schnorrers?
with Karlkammer’s red hair for a flag and the
sound of Gradkoski’s nose blowing for a trumpet-peal.
But I have written an acrostic against Guedalyah the
greengrocer, virulent as serpent’s gall.
He the Redeemer, indeed, with his diseased potatoes
and his flat ginger-beer! Not thus did the great
prophets and teachers in Israel figure the Return.
Let a great signal-fire be lit in Israel and lo! the
beacons will leap up on every mountain and tongue
of flame shall call to tongue. Yea, I, even I,
Melchitsedek Pinchas, will light the fire forthwith.”

“Nay, not to-day,” said Reb Shemuel, with
his humorous twinkle; “it is the Sabbath.”

The Rabbi was returning from synagogue and Pinchas
was giving him his company on the short homeward journey.
At their heels trudged Levi and on the other side
of Reb Shemuel walked Eliphaz Chowchoski, a miserable-looking
Pole whom Reb Shemuel was taking home to supper.
In those days Reb Shemuel was not alone in taking
to his hearth “the Sabbath guest”—­some
forlorn starveling or other—­to sit at the
table in like honor with the master. It was an
object lesson in equality and fraternity for the children
of many a well-to-do household, nor did it fail altogether
in the homes of the poor. “All Israel are
brothers,” and how better honor the Sabbath
than by making the lip-babble a reality?

“You will speak to your daughter?” said
Pinchas, changing the subject abruptly. “You
will tell her that what I wrote to her is not a millionth
part of what I feel—­that she is my sun by
day and my moon and stars by night, that I must marry
her at once or die, that I think of nothing in the
world but her, that I can do, write, plan, nothing
without her, that once she smiles on me I will write
her great love-poems, greater than Byron’s,
greater than Heine’s—­the real Song
of Songs, which is Pinchas’s—­that
I will make her immortal as Dante made Beatrice, as
Petrarch made Laura, that I walk about wretched, bedewing
the pavements with my tears, that I sleep not by night
nor eat by day—­you will tell her this?”
He laid his finger pleadingly on his nose.